The New Zealanders have a variety of national dances; but none of them have been minutely described. Some of them are said to display much grace of movement; others are chiefly remarkable for the extreme violence with which they are performed. As among the other South Sea tribes, when there are more dancers than one, the most perfect uniformity of step and attitude is preserved by all of them; and they do not consider it a dance at all when this rule is not attended to.
Captain Dillon very much amused some of those who came on board his ship by a sample of English dancing, which he made his men give them on deck. A company of soldiers going through their manual exercise would certainly have come much nearer their notions of what a dance ought to be.
Although there are no written laws in New Zealand, all these matters are, no doubt, regulated by certain universally understood rules, liberal enough in all probability, in the license which they allow to the tyranny of the privileged class, but still fixing some boundaries to its exercise, which will accordingly be but rarely overstepped. Thus, the power which the chief seems to enjoy of depriving any of his slaves of life may be limited to certain occasions only; as, for instance, the death of some member of the family, whose manes, it is conceived, demand to be propitiated by such an offering. That in such eases slaves are often sacrificed in New Zealand, we have abundant evidence.
Cruise even informs us that when a son of one of the chiefs died in Marsden's house, in New South Wales, it required the interposition of that gentleman's authority to prevent some of the boy's countrymen, who were with him, from killing a few of their slaves, in honour of their deceased friend. On other occasions, it is likely that the life of the slave can only be taken when he has been convicted of some delinquency; although, as the chief is the sole judge of his criminality, he will find this, it may be thought, but a slight protection. The domestic slaves of the chiefs, however, it is quite possible, and even likely, are much more completely at the mercy of their caprice and passion than the general body of the common people, whose vassalage may, after all, consist in little more than the obligation of following them to their wars, and rendering them obedience in such other matters of public concern.
Between the chiefs and the common people, who, as we have already mentioned, are called "cookees," there seems to be also a pretty numerous class, distinguished by the name of rungateedas, or, as it has been more recently written, rangatiras, which appears to answer nearly to the English term gentry.[[AX]] It consists of those who are connected by relationship with the families of the chiefs; and who, though not possessed of any territorial rights, are, as well as the chiefs themselves, looked upon as almost of a different species from the inferior orders, from whom they are probably as much separated in their political condition and privileges as they are in the general estimation of their rank and dignity. The term rangatira, indeed, in its widest signification, includes the chiefs themselves, just as our English epithet gentleman does the highest personages in the realm.
Although there is no general government in New Zealand, the chiefs differ from each other in power; and some of them seem even to exercise, in certain respects, a degree of authority over others. Those who are called areekees,[[AY]] in particular, are represented as of greatly superior rank to the common chiefs. It was, probably, a chief of this class of whom Cook heard at various places where he put in along the east coast of the northern island, on his first visit to the country. He calls him Teratu; and he found his authority to extend, he says, from Cape Turnagain to the neighbourhood of Mercury Bay. The eight districts, too, into which this island was divided by Toogee,[[AZ]] in the map of it which he drew for Captain King, were in all likelihood the nominal territories, or what we may call feudal domains, of so many areekees.
The account which Rutherford gives of the law, or custom, which prevails in New Zealand in regard to the crime of theft, may seem at first sight to be somewhat irreconcilable with the statements of other authorities, who tell us that this crime is regarded by the natives in so heinous a light that its usual punishment is death; whereas, according to him, it would seem scarcely to be considered by them as a crime at all.
This apparent disagreement, however, arises, in all probability, merely from that misapprehension, or imperfect conception, of the customs of a foreign people into which we are so apt to be misled by the tendency we have to mix up constantly our own previously acquired notions with the simple facts that present themselves to us, and to explain the latter by the former. With our habits and improved ideas of morality, we see in theft both a trespass upon the arbitrary enactments of society, which demands the correction of the civil magistrate, and a violation of that natural equity which is independent of all political arrangements, and would make it unfair and wrong for one man to take to himself what belongs to another, although there were no such thing as what is commonly called a government in existence.
But in the mind of the New Zealander these simple notions of right and wrong have been warped, and, as it were, suffocated, by a multitude of unnatural and monstrous inventions, which have grown up along with them from his very birth. How misapplied are the epithets, natural and artificial, when employed, as they often are, to characterise the savage and civilized state! It is the former, in truth, which is by far the most artificial; and much of civilization consists in the abolition of the numerous devices by which it has falsified and perverted the natural dispositions of the human heart and understanding, and in the reformation of society upon principles more accordant with their unsophisticated dictates.
Probably the only case in which the New Zealander looks upon theft as a crime is when it is accompanied by a breach of hospitality, or is committed upon those who have, in the customary and understood manner, entrusted themselves to his friendship and honour. In any other circumstances, he will scarcely hold himself disgraced by any act of depredation which he can contrive to accomplish without detection; however much the fear of not escaping with impunity may often deter him from making the attempt.